


community garden

by athenasdragon



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gardens & Gardening, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2019-05-29 08:34:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15069302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athenasdragon/pseuds/athenasdragon
Summary: The line about the Carrion Street community garden made me smile, so here's Errol getting to know desert horticulture and his new neighbors at the same time.





	community garden

**Author's Note:**

> I might add more to this later but I'm not sure if I will, so I figured I'd go ahead and post it. Enjoy!

The house on Carrion Street is dilapidated and empty when Errol moves in. He can handle the bare wooden walls, he can handle the cracks in the windows, he can even handle the way the dust swirls across the floorboards at night no matter how many rags he stuffs into cracks. What he has trouble coming to terms with is the yard out front. It’s plain, brown dirt, studded with gravel like sesame seeds on the rolls at that bakery he found near the Graysons’ office. The only thing growing in it is a twiggy brown shrub near the front steps that might very well be dead.

The proprietor of the feed store looks at him odd when he comes in, and Errol can’t blame him. He’s never worked the land in his life and it shows. Even so, after some rummaging and some cautious questions, he leaves with a trowel, a sturdy pair of gloves, a watering can, and three packets of seeds (peppers, squash, and basil, respectively).

He gets up early the next morning while it’s still cool and sets about breaking up the dirt outside with his trowel. The gravel poses a problem, but he picks it out as well as he can, throwing the little stones into a pile against the side of the house. The dry dirt crumbles into hard little pieces when he scrapes his trowel through it; there’s no way his seeds will take root in this.

One of his neighbors wanders by just as he’s starting to break a sweat. Errol recognizes her from a few houses down; she’s a plump, ever-smiling woman who lives alone with several large snakes. He squints up at her, panting a little in a way that he might find embarrassing if he wasn’t also crouching in his front yard covered in dirt.

“Well Errol Ryehouse, our newest neighbor! What are you doing out here on this fine morning?”

Errol holds up one of the seed packets. “I’m planting a garden.”

“Oh, that’s just wonderful. This place has always looked a little drab, if you ask me—so nice to have someone in the neighborhood with a good eye and a green thumb.” For a moment, Errol suspects she’s making fun of him, but her sunny smile and the way she clasps her hands as she speaks convince him otherwise. “Now where did you get your soil? I hope Mr. Hardwick down the block didn’t convince you to pay him for that dirt he dug out when he put in that well on his property.”

Errol’s joints creak as he stands. “My—soil?”

“Oh heavens Mr. Ryehouse, you’re not planning on putting your lovely vegetables in the sand, are you? That just won’t do. Let me get you some of the nice soft soil I bought for my Mr. Wiggles’ terrarium. He doesn’t like it anyway, bless him, I think he prefers the way the sand feels against his scales. Come with me and we can ask Mrs. Mills if she has any coffee grounds, too, she’s always saying that they make her flowers brighter when she pats them around the base.”

He follows the woman—Miss Gillis—in a bit of a daze while she continues to impart obscure fertilizer wisdom. She leaves him on her porch while she retrieves a large clay jug full of soft, dark soil, and Errol spends the wait watching a snake that might be the picky Mr. Wiggles as it naps in a patch of morning sun on the other side of the window pane. Then he’s whisked away next door, where Mrs. Mills is _very_ disappointed to learn that he has no intention to plant flowers, very disappointed indeed, Carrion Street just needs more color, and wouldn’t they both like to come in for a cup of coffee and a chat about horticulture, and _stop staring at the man Agatha,_ it isn’t polite. Errol smiles at the girl peering wide-eyed at him from behind her mother’s skirts, refuses the coffee, and accepts a glass jar full of grounds which he promises to wash and return.

Armed now with a trowel, a sturdy pair of gloves, a watering can, three packets of seeds, a jug of soil, and a jar of coffee grounds, Errol heads home for a second attempt. He pours the soil out in a narrow strip along the front wall of his house and carefully sprinkles in a handful of Mrs. Mills’ grounds. At this point in the process he is interrupted by the return of Mrs. Mills, who is sorry to disturb him but she really just thought he should start out with at least one flower and she overdid it on the adeniums this year and would he like to take this one, pot and all, to put on his step and keep him company while he works?

She’s holding a sturdy little plant with vivid red flowers, her vampiric features sharp and insistent but not unkind. Errol looks at her for a moment and then grins.

“I’d like that very much, Mrs. Mills. Thank you.”

“Well, as I said, the house is full of them. You’re doing me a favor.” She sets it down on the middle step and brushes the dirt off her hands in a brisk motion before nodding at her handiwork and striding away.

Errol shakes his head and watches her go. He’s getting an uncomfortable tugging in his chest that means he’s already starting to get attached to this little neighborhood and all the people in it. The adenium waves a little at him in the breeze and he smiles back, then sets about poking holes in his newly-laid soil to drop seeds into.


End file.
